March 4, 2013 - Landsat Legacy

Landsat Legacy NASA’s Landsat program, begun in 1972, was the first series of orbiting spacecraft designed to monitor Earth’s land masses. The third Landsat satellite was launched into near-polar orbit thirty-five years ago this week, and it captured multi-spectral images of Earth for five years. Since 1999, Landsat 7 has built on that legacy, capturing informative—and stunning—multi-spectral images like this montage of landforms in Iran’s largest desert, the Dasht-e Kavir, or Great Salt Desert. The almost uninhabited region covers an area of more than 77,000 square kilometers (29,730 square miles) and is a mix of dry streambeds, desert plateaus, mudflats, and salt marshes. Extreme heat, dramatic daily temperature swings, and violent storms are the norm in this inhospitable place.